A Kent woman who was on board a train during a mass stabbing has told how terrified passengers ran for their lives.

Amira Ostalski, from Folkestone, was on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) train from Doncaster to London when the attack happened in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

The University of Nottingham student told KentOnline she had been sitting listening to music when she saw a man being stabbed five rows ahead of her.

“I saw him fly out of his seat,” she said.

“People started screaming in our carriage saying, ‘Oh, the man's just been stabbed, run.’

“I was panicking.

“I didn't think that I would leave the train alive. The suspect was literally two metres from me.

“The last man that I saw in my distance was the man who got stabbed. So it made it feel like I was next if I wasn't quicker.”

Amira says she and her friend fled into another carriage and started telling people to hide in the toilets.

“Then the suspect ran in the opposite direction. And then he came back to us,” she said.

“People next to me, they were phoning the police, trying to get the train to stop.

Cambridge Police received its first distress calls of a multiple stabbing at 7.39pm. British Transport Police was called three minutes later.

The train made an emergency stop at Huntingdon station at 7.44pm.

Amira said: “When we got out of the train, finally, people were running with their open wounds, holding them and covering them.

“And then when I looked back, I saw the suspect just calmly standing there with a bottle and a large kitchen knife in his right hand. Like nothing happened.

“He was just walking around with it. And then I started running away from him, obviously. Everyone was running.”

The suspect, who got off the train, was apprehended by BTP officers at 7.50pm, as Amira and her pal “hid in the taxi rank”.

She says a Ukrainian woman who had also been on the train was “crying so much because she thought that her son got stabbed, but he was covered in someone else's blood”.

Amira admits the horrific ordeal has made her more wary of using public transport in the future.

“I'm quite confident and I feel like that's been taken away from me now,” she added.

Anthony Williams, 32, appeared at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court on Monday charged with 10 counts of attempted murder.

He is also charged with one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one count of possession of a bladed article.

He was remanded into custody to appear at Cambridge Crown Court on December 1.

Saturday’s attack is understood to have started shortly after the train left Peterborough station.

Passengers pulled the emergency alarms on the LNER service.

Train driver Andrew Johnson, who served in the Royal Navy for 17 years, contacted a signaller and requested an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon station.

Ten patients were taken by ambulance to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and one patient self-presented, British Transport Police said on Tuesday.

Six patients have been discharged, four patients remain stable and one, an LNER member of staff, remains stable but critically unwell, BTP said.

The train crew member was seriously injured while trying to protect passengers.

Samir Zitouni, known as Sam, “did not hesitate as he stepped forward to protect those around him”, his employer said.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said: “Sam went to work on Saturday morning to do his job. He left a hero.”